Start Small Habits Now

I have read a brilliant book by Stephen Guise - "Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results".

In this book, Stephen talks about some serious life changing stuff. He talks about how to develop good habits, and in the process get rid of bad ones.

His method comes from Laozi's book "Tao Te Ching" very famous quote:

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"

This quote is as much brilliant as it is obvious. It gives universal formula how to do things. It also explains the only way to do things.

Many successful authors borrowed from this philosophy, and expanded on it. Based on this work is famous continuous improvement philosophy Kaizen. Homer Sarasohn and Charles Protzman helped rebuild Japan destruction during World War II, and Kaizen originated from their work. The main principle of this method is to do small steps toward a goal, and to treat each one as the most important. There are huge Japanese multinational corporations built on this philosophy.

There is a Chinese proverb that says:

"It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward."

This can summarize Stephens method. He constructed one ingenious habit called "One push-up Challenge". He challenged himself to do one push-up every day. Silly, right? Not really.

He constructed a habit to assume a push-up position and do one push-up. What do you think happened after he did that one push-up? He did five more.

I strongly recommend you read his book. In this post I will talk about my implementation of what I have learned from it.

I have made a list of small habits that I would like to have in my life. Stephen recommends starting with three or four, but I have started with ten.

The hard part is to do your new habit for first few weeks. Since it is not yet established as a habit, you will forget to do it. Tomorrow you will be aware that you have skipped a day, feel unmotivated and dump the habit altogether. If you skipped one day it is very easy to skip the next one, too.

Aristotle said:

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

If we want something to become a habit, we must do it repeatedly. It then becomes our nature and greatly influences our life.

One of the greatest bloggers Leo Babauta has an article on his site Zenhabits, titled "The Habit of Starting". I will quote one sentence from his article:

"... the key to forming a habit is starting each day"

Two main ingredients of forming a habit are:

1. Make habit a small one. It does not matter if it is ridiculously small. I have a habit that says "Eat one fruit". And I did it for 50 days in a row, and counting.

2. Do it every single day. You have no excuse to fail doing a small habit. One push-up. I would like anyone to explain to me how you can not do it if you have all four healthy limbs.

Leo is talking about some other things like accountability. He proposes to share our habit with a friend, and let them know how we are progressing. I do not think that is necessary, especially if that person is not also forming his or hers own habits. Who cares if I have or have not eaten a fruit?

Practicing mindfulness can help you stay accountable to yourself. Do two minutes meditation session mentally checking the list of habits you want to form.

Honestly, I do not do that. I cheat a bit. Habit List is an iPhone app I have installed and it helped me keep track of my daily and weekly habits. What makes me accountable to Habit List? Believe it or not - that three dollars I have paid for it! Somehow the authors of this app have nailed exactly what I needed to start my shiny new good habits, and I am grateful to them for it. I am diligently checking off my ten to twelve habits every day for two months now. I have total of two missed habits out of about 700 total.

Guess who else came to similar idea - famous comedian Jerry Seinfeld. I am paraphrasing his advice given to Brad Isaac:

"Each year, hang a large calendar on the wall, for every day you do your habit, you have the pleasure to draw big red "X" over that day."

The idea was not to break the chain. Breaking the chain makes skipping that habit easier the next day.

You will not break a chain if your habit is small one! This is the brilliant idea Stephen Guise explained to us in his book.

This method is the one you can use to set up mindfulness meditation habit. Start a habit of meditation for three minutes each morning right after you wake up. Do it every day, and if you feel you can meditate for two more minutes then do two more minutes, by all means. If not, you have completed your habit for the day and happily move on.

Add another habit of mindfulness at the office, if at all appropriate. Concentrate on the top of your monitor (if you use one) for two minutes each day. I am sure nobody will notice it and that you will not have any bad consequences.

Establish some "fun" habits, too. I love photography, so I have a habit to post one picture on the Instagram each day. I spend way to much time on Instagram, but with this habit I actually post only one picture, and not three or four as I used to do. What I did, is turn a bad habit into a less bad habit. I will not break that habit, though, because I love to photograph. Photography makes me more mindful about my surroundings, since I am often looking around for some interesting stuff to shoot.

Be creative with your habits. Do not just "exercise", "meditate", "write". I have a habit to eat 20 grams of dark chocolate a day. It is very healthy when consumed in moderation.

With Habit List app I also established some non-daily habits. I have a weekly habit to "take a long walk", which means I go walking to Farmers Market with my wife each Saturday, where we buy fresh produce and fruit, and where we have a cup of coffee in our favorite coffeehouse. Since I work 9 to 5, I do not have two hours each day to spend on this activity, so I proclaimed it a weekly habit.

I have also started writing a journal, with a few sentences about my day, and on top of it a gratitude journal, where I list five things I am grateful about. I can recommend Rick Hanson's book "Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence", to learn how to properly write a gratitude journal. Before reading his book, I have noticed that I do not have too much use of gratitude journal. I would just write some lines there and it would feel like a chore. I have already started and abandoned such journal last year. Now I have started it again but armed with scientifically proven method of how to do it right. Now I am happily on day 37 of my new gratitude journal! I use beautiful "Day One" app to write. This app actually provides me with a bit of incentive, which stacked on  top of my already forming habit and makes me love writing a journal.

Basically, you deal with two habit-forming issues: motivation and willpower. Both are scarce and untrustworthy. By having small daily habits you eliminate the problems. Reading for 10 minutes requires a little willpower and absolutely no motivation.

Stephen Guise gives an estimate, in his book, about how long you have to build your small habits, so I recommend you to read it. This is a tricky bit!

Good luck with your new good habits. Please write in the comments sections which habits you want to build for yourself and how can it be converted to small habit!